Six Blades of Kojiro: All Duellist Locations & How to Beat Every Duel

The Six Blades of Kojiro Mythic Tale requires you to defeat five named duellists scattered across Tsushima, then face Kojiro himself at Omi Monastery. Beat all six and you unlock Kojiro’s Armour — a legendary set that boosts Resolve gains and Ghost weapon damage. This guide covers every duellist location, the tactical patterns that make each fight easier, and a breakdown of Kojiro’s aggressive moveset so you’re not going in blind.

All five duellist locations are spread across Act 2 regions, and none are missable. If you’ve already beaten some duels while exploring, those count automatically. You only need to clean up the remaining ones before returning to Yamato.

How to Start the Six Blades of Kojiro Mythic Tale

The quest unlocks at the start of Act 2 and won’t appear before that — so if you’re still grinding through Act 1, bookmark this and come back.

Head to the Totoyama region, specifically Umugi Cove on its western edge. There’s a lively inn there, and the storyteller Yamato is sitting out on the back deck overlooking the water. He’s easy to miss if you walk in through the front — go around the side of the building and look for the outdoor platform. Talk to him to trigger the tale.

Before you start tracking down duellists, a practical note: stock up on healing items and make sure you’ve unlocked at least the first tier of Resolve upgrades. The duels themselves don’t allow you to use ranged tools or throwables, so your Resolve is the only resource you can actually spend mid-fight.

Where to Find All Five Duellists

Each duellist is tied to a named duel location. The table below gives you everything at a glance — duel name, enemy name, and the region to find them in.

If your map already shows some of these as completed, they’re done — no need to revisit. The quest tracks them passively as long as you defeated the duellist at the correct location. Duels you won before starting the Mythic Tale still count.

One thing worth knowing: the Kamiagata duel (Kanetomo) requires Act 3 access. If you haven’t unlocked the northern region yet, you’ll need to progress the main story before you can finish the full set.

Essential Duel Strategy & Combat Tips

All five duellists pull from the same mechanical pool — they’re sword-wielding human enemies, which means Stone Stance is the correct choice for every single fight. Don’t overthink the stance selection here.

The core loop for winning duels in Ghost of Tsushima comes down to one disciplined habit: attack in short bursts of two or three hits, then stop and read the enemy’s response. Landing a fourth hit almost always results in you eating a parry counter or an unblockable — the game’s duel AI is built around punishing greed.

Here’s what the duel combat system actually rewards:

• Standoffs before the duel starts. Win the opening standoff and you begin the fight with bonus Resolve, which you can immediately spend on a healing technique if you take early damage. Don’t skip the standoff trying to be cautious — the Resolve advantage is significant.
• Sidestepping, not backstepping. Moving laterally around a duellist opens up flank hits and resets their aggression window. Backstep is slower and often gets you punished by their follow-up lunge.
• Sheathed sword = free hit window. When a duellist sheathes mid-fight, they’re winding up an unblockable. Hit them first during that animation and you interrupt it cleanly. If you don’t, the attack comes out fast and deals heavy damage.
• Perfect parries over perfect dodges. Perfect parries stagger duellists reliably and open a two-hit punish window. Perfect dodges give you a brief slow-time window but less guaranteed punish damage. Against aggressive attackers like Hirotsune, parries tend to win you more health economy.
• Heal during sword clashes. Those scripted moments where blades lock briefly — both characters gritting through each other — are free frames. Pop a heal. The animation protects you from interruption.

Across the five duellists, Yasumasa is notably aggressive with his forward dashes and will mix up his combo timing to catch you mid-parry. Give his attacks an extra beat before you respond. Kanetomo up north uses a lot of feints — watch for the brief pause in his swing animation before committing to a parry direction.

That said, none of the five are particularly demanding if you’re used to the game’s duel system. They function more as a warm-up for Kojiro than as standalone challenges.

How to Beat Kojiro at Omi Monastery

After defeating all five duellists, return to Yamato at Umugi Cove. He’ll confirm that Kojiro has been watching and is waiting for you. The location: Omi Monastery, in the Kamiagata region.

Getting there is slightly unintuitive. The monastery itself is a recognisable landmark, but Kojiro isn’t standing in the open. Look for the large red maple tree near the waterfall on the monastery’s eastern side. Behind the tree is a cave entrance — Kojiro waits inside, in a narrow chamber lit by shafts of light through the rock ceiling.

Kojiro is the hardest duellist in the quest by a meaningful margin. The gap between him and the five preceding duellists is real, not cosmetic. Here’s why, and how to handle it.

Kojiro’s Attack Patterns

His kit is built around pressure. Unlike the five duellists, who tend to attack in predictable bursts and then create recovery windows, Kojiro chains aggression with very short gaps. He uses three attacks you need to specifically prepare for:

The multi-hit chain. Kojiro strings together three to four fast hits without pausing. The correct response is to parry the first two and then dodge back rather than trying to parry the full chain — his later hits in the combo have slightly different timing and can break your parry rhythm if you stay greedy.

The delayed unblockable. His unblockable is telegraphed by the red flash, same as every enemy, but his delay before release is longer than the five duellists’. Community testing confirms this is intentional — players who’ve fought duellists in order often mistime their dodge because they’re used to a faster unblockable window. Wait an extra half-beat before dodging.

The sheathe-and-burst. Same mechanic as other duellists, but Kojiro transitions into his sheathe animation from a moving position, making it harder to spot from the side. If he starts moving toward you with his sword partially lowered, that’s the wind-up. Hit him immediately or create distance and bait the full animation.

Tactical Approach

Stone Stance, standoff win, early Resolve — the same fundamentals apply. But the adjustment against Kojiro is patience. His aggression is designed to pull you into attacking during windows that aren’t actually safe. The fight becomes manageable the moment you accept that you’re going to deal less damage per exchange than you want to.

Two or three reliable hits per opening, then reset to neutral. Parry the opener of his chain, dodge back out of the follow-up, and resist the urge to punish immediately — let him finish his animation before you re-engage. His second-phase aggression increases if you’ve taken significant damage, so spending Resolve on healing early (when you still have the health buffer) is smarter than waiting until you’re desperate.

If you’re struggling, the Traveller’s Attire or Sakai Armour perform well here — Sakai’s bonus to sword damage speeds up the fight, while Traveller’s helps with Resolve generation if you’re burning through heals. Kojiro’s Armour, ironically, is not yet available to you.

Kojiro’s Armour Stats & Whether It’s Worth It

Beat Kojiro and you receive his armour set. The honest assessment: it’s decent, not dominant. Here’s what it actually does.

Kojiro’s Armour increases Resolve gains and boosts damage with Ghost weapons — kunai, sticky bombs, black powder bombs, and the like. At base level it provides a moderate bonus to both. Fully upgraded, it becomes a reasonable choice for hybrid playstyles that mix sword play with Ghost tool usage, particularly in fights where you want to cycle through Resolve heals while maintaining pressure with throwables.

What it doesn’t do: it doesn’t offer meaningful defence bonuses, and it won’t replace the Sakai Armour for pure sword damage or the Kensei Armour for aggressive Resolve building through deflection. If you’re deep into a Ghost weapon build, the set has genuine value. If you’ve been playing Jin as a swordsman-first, you’ll likely equip it, admire it, and go back to what you were using.

The real reason to complete the quest is the Mythic Tale itself — it’s one of the more structurally satisfying side quests in the game, with Yamato’s storytelling serving as a running thread through what could otherwise be a disconnected bounty hunt. The armour is a bonus, not the point.

What’s Next After Completing the Quest

There are seven Mythic Tales total in Ghost of Tsushima, and Six Blades of Kojiro is typically the longest to complete because it requires clearing so much map space first. With it done, the remaining tales feel comparatively focused — most revolve around a single location or a tight chain of two to three objectives.

If you’re working through all seven for the trophy or just for the story, the Mythic Tales tied to Izuhara (particularly the one rewarding the Kensei Armour) are worth prioritising next — the Kensei set’s combat bonuses have strong synergy with the duel-heavy content you’ve just been doing. The tales are also connected to some of the game’s best environmental storytelling, so even if the gear isn’t an upgrade, they’re worth your time.

One practical note: completing all seven Mythic Tales contributes to the Legend meter, which affects how NPCs across Tsushima react to Jin. If you’re pushing toward 100% completion or the Platinum, Mythic Tales are among the cleaner quests to tick off — most are self-contained, well-marked after starting, and none lock you out of anything else.

The Six Blades of Kojiro wraps up one of the game’s stronger Mythic Tales. Now go find Yamato a better story to tell.